Why We Oppose the Ethiopian Dictatorial Regime?
Since 1991 the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is ruling
Ethiopia with an iron hand & without popular consent. The
divisive ethnic policies it adopted to rule Ethiopia are intended to
guarantees TPLF’s monopoly of political & economic power by
weakening the composite identity of Ethiopians that transcend
ethnicity & religion. Politically engineered deep ethnic & religious
fissures are threatening the very coexistence of its people.
Confident of the effectiveness of its ethnic policy (its success in
freezing ethnic identities & dividing Ethiopians along ethnic lines)
& under the intense pressure of Western countries, for the first &
last time, TPLF held a relatively free general election in 2005.
However, when it realized that it lost the election, it falsely
declared victory for itself before all the votes were counted. When
the people peacefully protested against the vote rigging, security
forces killed 193 civilian protesters under the order of prime
minster Mr. Meles Zenawi of TPLF. Moreover, the TPLF regime
arrested & subjected to maltreatment 33000 opposition party
supporters, including elected MPs and human rights defenders.
After the 2005 general election the TPLF has increasingly shown
more paranoid & defensive posture. In 2010 general election it
unilaterally declared to have won 99.6% of the parliament seats
leaving no elbowroom for opposition political parties. TPLF
suppresses political dissent by invoking counter terrorism laws
that it promulgates at will & with a stroke of a pen by way of
denying opposition political parties even elbowroom to present
their alternative political programs. According to the recently
released Amnesty International reports, there are at least 114
opposition political party members & journalist that have been
arrested under false charges of terrorism. Some of the defendants
like journalist Woubshet Taye & opposition leader Andualem
Aragie have been tortured in prison. Forcibly evicted farmers
opposed to the leasing out of their land are locked up in known &
hidden dungeons of the regime dotted across the country.
Each day, hundreds of families join the ranks of the homeless that
crowd the streets of major cities like Addis Ababa. In 2011
Ethiopia was home to 7 million orphans as against half a million
orphans in 1991 when the TPLF took power. Three billion US
dollars aid money flows to the regime annually from Western
governments & financial moguls such as IMF & World Bank. But
this aid money does not reach needy Ethiopians. Aid money is
misused by TPLF to buy the favor of its supporters at best; or at
worst it finds its way into the pockets of the corrupt ethnic rulers
who have transformed themselves into multi-millionaires who
own millions of dollars in foreign banks. Highlighting this
corruption, in December 2011, the Wall Street Journal stated,
“Ethiopia lost $11.7 billion US dollars to outflows of illgotten gains between 2000 and 2009”. Currently the
regime is busy with a leasing spree leasing out millions of
hectares of land to wealthy Indians, Arabs, Chinese & others by
evicting Ethiopian farmers from their ancestral lands. Such
draconian measures were not witnessed even during the brief
occupation of Ethiopia by fascist Italy 78 years ago.
Our protest today is part of an on-going peaceful struggle by us
members of the Ethiopian Diaspora:
- to draw the attention of the Dutch public to the suffering of our
people in Ethiopia.
- to register our displeasure with the TPLF dictatorial regime that
blackmails & pressurizes the Diaspora-based Ethiopians to raise
funds for the maintenance of its odious rule.
- to urge Dutch taxpayers to pressure their government not to
extend financial support to a regime that dehumanizes its people,
unleashes a reign of terror, suppresses democracy, abuses aid
money to strength its dictatorial rule with impunity.
Economic aid should promote respect of human rights &
democratic expression & not abet dictatorship!!!!.
Long live the solidarity of the Ethiopian & Dutch
peoples - Amsterdam 25th of February 2012